down towardthefiscalcliffdeadlineand looming tax hikes andspendingcuts, thatwill impact nearly every single american we are just hours away from a crucial white house meeting of the president obama and leaders from the house and senate will sit down for their first face-to-face since november! but what can they hope to accomplish with so little time left, and at this point do they even want to come up with a solution? joining us oklahoma congressman james langford, incoming chairman of republican policy committee and serves on the house oversight and budget committees. congressman, are we going over the cliff? >> well we certainly hope so, hope not actually, but trying to get this resolved. the house as you know full well passed all of our sequestration documents in may. passed all of our tax documents in august and we have waited for the senate all this time and for the president frankly all this time. frustrating for the house did all our work early and be at the point we never hoped to be at. jon: when senate majority leader harry reid says speaker boehner, leader of the hou

thefiscalcliff, justfour days left before we go over the edge triggers tax hikes,spendingcutsthatcould send the nation back into recession. the president calling for members of the congress the back. a gang of six attending. vice president biden, harry reid, house minority leader nancy pelosi, mitch mcconnell and john boehner representing the republicans. brianna keilar is live from washington. is anybody optimistic that a deal could be done today around a table? >> i will tell you the optimism is sort of sinking. senate majority leader harry reid said he doesn't see how it can get done by january 1st. we heard from president obama before he left from his vacation that he was optimistic. logistically the white house will tell you it's possible. when you listen to what you're hearing some of these congressional leaders say, there's a lot of posturing laying blame to the other side if we do go over the cliff. take a listen. >> republicans are not about to write a blank check for anything senate democrats put forward because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff. >> we are here in wa

sales was uncertainty aboutthefiscalcliff, taxhikes and spendingcutssetto take effect next year. if lawmakers don't reach a deal to avoid it consumers could see higher taxes eating into their paychecks. even online sales suffered compared to past years of double-digit growth this year online holiday sales rose only about 8% compared to nearly 16% last year. lack of consumer confidence means this shopping season could be the weakest since the recession in 2008 when sales actually shrank. >> consumers need to have more confidence. right now it's more of an uncertain way for the first half of 2013 so i think everyone has thought going into the year. >> for businesses, the holiday shopping season officially ends december 31st, and retailers are hoping to salvage some profits by offering deep discounts until then. the president of the national retail federation is still optimistic. he estimates holiday sales growth will be about 3.5% to 4% this year. rebecca and jeff? >> thanks elaine. it's interesting, macy's and target report next week so we're going to hea

a deal to avoid the massive automatic tax hikes andspendingcutsknownasthefiscalcliff. >>president obama spent christmas day visiting with troops in hawaii. >> while back in washington uncertainty about the looming fiscal cliff continues. there has been to communication between republicans and democrats about how to avoid going over the cliff. before the christmas break, speaker john boehner was unable to get enough support from respects to pass his plan and help said it was up to the white house and the senate to avert the cliff. so now harry reid is believed to be crafting a plan of his own. it's expected to extend bush-era tax cuts. it would also include short-term spending cuts instead of the massive cuts that would occur if there is no deal. it would also patch up the alternative minimum tax that will hit even more middle class families and schedule a drop off for doctors. >> if republicans do give in and support the deal being put together by harry reid that deal is expected to be far less favorable than the potential deal they had been work

hitthefiscalcliff. whathappens to your bottom line if you do? january 1st all the bushtaxcutswillexpire, all of them with taxes going up an average of $1,600 per household. the payroll tax holiday also expires, that means the tax burden will rise an average of $700 per household. extended unemployment benefits, the ones we were talking about with lisa expire, so collection of unemployment benefits will shrink from 79 or 99 weeks back to 26 weeks in six months. the medicare doc fix expires, a 27% cut in physician payments and the alternative minimum tax will expand to 27 million more americans for whom it was not intended. obama care taxes hit, a 0.9% jump in medicare payroll taxes for those earning $200,000 or more, that is likely to happen regardless of whether or not there's any fix. i bring in senator richard blumenthal, a democrat from connecticut. thanks for joining us. we have five days to go. you think we'll get a deal. >> i'm hopeful. there's sufficient time to reach a deal if we use the common ground we have and that common ground is nobody wants to go over the fisc

thespendingcuts. whathappens if we go offthefiscalclifffora few days. >> not much is my understanding. it's much more what the market psyche will do and with respect with the tax hikes and cuts, the hit people take is not as much as the rhetoric suggested early on. what weather it's enough to get back to negotiating things, i agree with you that we will go over the deadline. that's the big question of what kind of political ramifications we will have. you will have a chunk more on the payroll. there is a cut because of the sequestration. >> all of us are aware that most people at the top of fortune 500 companies look at these claims saying this is ridiculous. you couldn't run any business the way they try to run the country. is there any immediate impact on the markets next week with their inability to get anything done? >> yes. that's the biggest impact by far. yes, the payroll tax will take effect and that will be one of the most immediate things we see, but it takes two weeks to adjust your paychecks and spend more time repairing and restoring and trying to solve that. the market d

are 10 hours before we reached theso-calledfiscalcliff. thatgovernment-imposed deadline fortaxcuts, alsosequestration. they will go into effect for 2013 unless a compromise is reached. the president says we are close, but there is no final deal. some of our twitter comments -- richard is joining us from ohio. republican line. caller: thank you. i do not understand what is going on with the unemployment rate and everything else. i have been looking for work for nine months now. the only thing around here is dishwasher, stuff like that. my wife is disabled. there is no money in the household. and yet, they keep wanting to go up and up and up. i have no idea what to do to support my family. i know there are millions of americans out there, people in worse shape than i am. i have no idea where to go next. host: richard, have you talk to your members of congress? caller: >> no, i have not. host: do you think any agreement lawmakers make today will make a difference? caller: honestly, i do not think it will make much of the difference. i thought we was doing good. i got injured on my jo

this all along, go offthefiscalcliff. >>i think that he sees a lotofcutstothe military, which the democrats have been after for a long time. and then he gets to do what he loves to do, which is blame republicans. my concern is that i actually see financial problems for our nation at the bottom of the cliff. the president was really interested in the level of the debt we have in this country, the $16 trillion, we would have had a budget pass the senate sometime in the last three years. he proposed a budget, none of the democrats even voted for it. >> juliet: remember, they're having a meeting in a few hours and with all the sniping going back and forth, particularly from janer and harry reid, they'll be in that little room together. it should be interesting. >> eric: brass sew makes a good point and i agree that president obama probably wanted to go over the cliff from the very beginning, but i don't agree where he said at the bottom of the fiscal cliff is something bad for america. it will be tough medicine to take, we've been talking about it, spending cuts to defense, no one

, if we go over the f 'tis cal cliiscal cl should buy some room.thefiscalcliffisacutintaxes and a cut in spending which should relieve some of the spending toward the debt limit. it is a factor in terms of long range planning for the united states government. but actually going over the cliff might buy some more time. so i think what secretary geithner was doing was sort of issuing a warning saying we should take care of this now. whatever the plan is in the last five days or even if it's right after the new year should probably take into account the fact we're going to need more room under that debt ceiling at some point. >> jonathan allen, we'll rely on you throughout this crisis to see what's going on. thanks for joining us this morning. >> take care, drew. >>> he was hoping he'd be home by christmas but former president george h.w. bush is still in intensive care at a houston hospital. he's got an elevated fever. the nation's 41st president is on a liquid diet. he's listed as guarded. he's the 88-year-old bush coping with christmas in the hospital? well, his spokesman qu

iscuttingshorthis vacation to hawaii. he is returning to deal with economic matters,thefiscalcliff. ifhis death has been quietly talking with senate democrats are the christmas holiday to come up with a planned to avert or prevent the cliff. in the meantime, the senate does plan a session tomorrow. perhaps we will hear more about an agreement before the new year's deadline. the house is due tomorrow as well. we do not have an agenda and there. with the fiscal cliffhanging out there heading into the year 2013, do you have optimism or pessimism heading into the new ? you can also send in your comment via twitter, a post a comment on facebook, or write us an e-mail. the theme of optimism or lack of it is prevalent in the papers. wednesday with congress and the president heading back to washington. here is a headline on "usa today." in the wall street journal -- if the in "the washington post." we welcome your phone calls. we will get to them in a moment. we did find another piece at politico. there you have it in the papers this morning about people being optimistic or pessimistic ab

to be on popularity over the next few weeks if we go overthefiscalcliffandhe ends upmakingcutsandso forth. what is going to happen is ultimately if this is is a success or a failure, it's his legacy that's going to tell the story that doesn't come down for republican's back against the walls this mess that krauthammer pointed out. what the republicans are doing mess in the house putting up this plan b and may get less than plan b they couldn't get a vote on plan b. senator corker thinks this whole thing he mentioned last night on greta is really too much spending keeping the spending and getting the tax increases, listen. >> it's a shame in this nation where every developed country in the world knows that our greatest threat is our fiscal solvency that you would have to have leverage points. you would think people would sit down and solve the problem because we know it is our greatest threat. that's not the case here. we have a president who has not laid out a plan. he is obviously a spendaholic. time quickly running out for a deal washington will be working all weekend in hopes of reachi

ofthefiscalcliff. >>juliet: love it. >> dave:mightcutyourpaycheck. we're not kidding. more info on that. >> clayton:'s he one of our favorite television neurotic guys, he's neurotic in real life, larry david. >> you came by the hall, wouldn't let me get by wouldn't let you get by me? >> my appointment was 11:30, yours is 11:45. >> clayton: turns out being neurotic may actually be good for you. we'll explain. "fox & friends" hour two starts right now. ♪ >> oh. >> juliet: why is that good news? why are you smiling about that neurotic thing? >> i agree with larry david on a lot of things. stop and chat, laboring about it all day, stop and chat. >> juliet: i move it along and the elevator is the worst. >> dave: stop and chat and you want to talk to clayton and you get natalie. >> clayton: for 40 minutes you're stuck in a conversation. we'll have more on that coming up. >> dave: it's seven o'clock eastern time and now what that means. >> clayton: how many hours left. >> dave: starbucks is open. >> clayton: starbucks is open. >> juliet: lisa, where are you? >> our day can continue. and we'

and a whole suite of things that were part ofthefiscalcliffthataren't going to be touched. we'll have the debt ceiling rehash, all of these things come back in the first couple of weeks. >> we have a timeline issue here, we just -- a few days away, things have to -- things don't move quickly in washington as we know. there are rules in both houses of when things can come up, how much time has to pass for debate. they have to change rules to get it through quickly. even if senate comes up with the deal. mcconnell and harry reid come up with the deal. they accept it to the house on sunday night, monday morning. what are the chances of them getting their ducks in a row, boehner getting his ducks in a row and us still being able to avoid the krif? >> right. we should have a better sense of that by tomorrow afternoon when they start to reconvene. speaker boehner made it clear at the meeting at the white house on friday, anything that the senate passes will be considered by the house, might be amended, might be changed a bit. has to go back to the senate quick for changes. but he said will

up with a small, kick-the-can down the road bill, that createsanotherfiscalclifftodeal with this fiscal cliff. how irresponsible is that? >> reporter: and does washington still, the stock market burns. dropping for a sixth-straight day under this uncertainty. americans are burning up, too. >> this is america. they should be working for the american people. >> can't believe we got this close. >> get in a room and don't come out of the room until you've got this thing taken care of. >> reporter: what the senate leaders hope to do is put together this deal, bring it to the senate tomorrow. then, the house comes back in session tomorrow night. they can vote on any deal passed by the senate. but bianna, no one is holding their breath here in washington. >> no one is, indeed. >>> for more on the big white house meeting, we want to bring in john avlon, political columnist at "the daily beast." a busy man covering all of this. how do you see this playing out? >> we're three days out. nothing focuses than the prospect of being hanged. today, bianna, is the key day. saturday, tod

overthefiscalcliffmuststart in the senate. >> gretchen: a lot of people were upset because members of congress just can't seem to get their act together or the president, depending on which side of the fence that you're on of the they were upset that they went on christmas vacations. the president went to hawaii and members of congress went home. both sides said we're going to come back to washington because we've got to solve the situation. i think what so many people are frustrated about is this is an ongoing situation. it's like every year we come to this point where we're talk being this cliff and this is what i think has angered so many voters and why congress has such a low approval rating. >> rick: they also got to this point because of their last time they did this. it was the last debt creating fight that deleted this thing. now they gave themselves an amount of time to work on it you and thought maybe last week there was a little progress being made. turns out there is not. we're back to exactly where we started at and we're eight days out now. >> clayton: you're right ab

republicans are fighting to have a balanced point of view forthefiscalcliff. ifthe president wants to spend $one. 6 trillion, he should cut the spending by that. it should be 400,000 jobs. people who give us jobs are the people that earn $400,000 and can afford to have a family and pay for employees. i am very grateful for your mentioning the fact he went on 310 campaigns. i was wondering what he was doing when he was not in the office leading. now i understand he was out campaigning. when he does campaign, have you been able to figure out how much he has cost the american taxpayer for the trips he takes? in hawaii, they mentioned he is lazy because he is from hawaii. i am wondering if he spends all his time campaigning. host: it sounds like he might spend time there because it is warmer than washington, d.c. caller: he does not work that much. when he was in chicago in the senate, in the illinois senate, he did not work that hard. he was only marked present. i did not believe that. now i see the way he operates. he does not seem to be doing his job. that is why he spent $6 trillio

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